Sometimes when traveling among other cultures, we experience things that are so far removed from our own experiences that it’s difficult to put it into any context, and even witnessing it doesn’t seem real.

While I was in Nepal, I spent a few weeks working on a rebuilding project, which was organised through an agency. Something like 52,000 schools were destroyed in the earthquakes, affecting the education of 1.7 million children, so we were there building new classrooms so that children could return to school. It was tough work – most days we were working in blazing heat, laying bricks, mixing cement and moving sand, and most nights it rained, so that we started each day bucketing out water from the foundations we had dug the previous day. We would go home each day covered in a mixture of sweat, sand, sunscreen and cement, but knowing we were doing our part to get children back into school, in classrooms that would be much more likely to withstand another quake. It was tough, but worth it.

As part of the program, we were given a presentation one evening by two members of the Nepal Youth Foundation, which is a local charity that works closely with the organisation I was there with, founded by an American lady named Olga Murray. This is a lady who traveled to Nepal one year, saw children suffering from malnutrition, homelessness and not going to school, decided she could do something about it, and went back to Nepal every year after that. I can still remember the words of a young man in a video they showed us, who said: “My education has given me empowerment and independence. Now I can say I’m a productive member of society. That is a gift no one can put a price tag on”.

Other work of the NYF includes abolishing the practice of Kumlari, the selling of daughters into servitude. The NYF, led by a man named Som, who was here telling us about it, set up a program called ‘Indentured Daughters’, aiming to rescue girls from being sold and instead get them into education. They showed us a video, which I have found the link to, and which I highly recommend you watch now, if you can:

http://www.nepalyouthfoundation.org/media/videos/freeing-enslaved-girls-in-nepal-the-indentured-daughters-program/

I was moved almost to tears watching this video, not just because it made me sad to think of these poor girls pretty much being sold as slaves at such a young age, but because of the success they have had with the program. It works for three reasons: one, by providing an alternate means of income to these families in the form of a goat or a pig; two, because they are working to change the mentality behind the practice, teaching families to value their daughters just as much as their sons, and; three, because there are people, like the ones from the NYF and all those girls who protested against weak law enforcement, who are willing to commit so much time and energy to their cause. It made me feel proud to be a human being, but it also forced me to think of what else I could be doing. I remembered what Olga said at the end of the video about money going so much further in Nepal: “When I think about what it costs in San Francisco, to go out for dinner, or to get a new dress – I can save a child’s life for that amount of money here”. A hundred dollars really doesn’t seem like much, to save a girl from servitude and send her to school. And of course, when a girl gets to go to school, it’s much more likely that her daughters will go to school, and her daughters, and so on and so on.

After the presentation we had dinner and I went over to Som to talk to him about the Indentured Daughters program. “I just wanted to congratulate you on the work you’ve done,” I said as we shook hands. “Saving 11,000 girls from being sold, that’s really something.”

“Oh, it’s more than that now.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. That video was made in 2011. It doesn’t happen anymore. We’ve completely abolished the practice in Nepal.”

My mouth dropped open and I struggled to find words.

“You’ve abolished it? But that’s amazing!”

“Oh, yes,” he said simply.

What a difference a few passionate people can make. I had to wipe tears from my eyes as I walked out to get on the bus home.

Other aspects of the work of the NYF includes providing education for children with disabilities, who are often shunned by society, and running nutrition rehabilitation centres for malnourished children and their carers, to bring them back to health and educate them about proper nutrition. About half of Nepali children under 5 are malnourished, Som told us, and this is a major cause of death in this age group.

A few days after that presentation, I was able to spend a day at one of these centres, nearby in the Kathmandu Valley. The centre was set on a hill overlooking plains and farmland on one side and mountains on the other. If it wasn’t such a sad and lonely place, it would have been beautiful. There were about 6 or 7 children who were running around, excited to see us, the rest were either too young or too weak keep up. All of them were alarmingly thin, but some, at least, had more of a glow about them, but all of them had a pinched, gaunt look about their eyes. There was one small child lying in one of the nursery rooms, who could have been a month or a year old – it was impossible to tell – lying awake, but unresponsive. It was heartbreaking.

From what I could gather, the centre had taken in a number of children after the quakes who had been injured, orphaned or both, including a teenager who had lost both legs. Most of them had been moved to another centre the day before, but one remained, a young boy suffering from cerebral palsy who had lost both parents. At the time I was there, representatives from the centre were trying to negotiate with people from his village, who did not want to take him back – as he could not work, they did not want the responsibility of caring for him. I listened to one of the other volunteers telling me this while I watched him, watching the others play, laughing and calling out as if he was having as much fun as them. I never found out if he was able to return home.

However, despite all the sadness and despair, there was hope at this centre. On the walls were before and after photos of children and infants who had come in on the point of starvation and left a couple of months later with healthy baby glows and pot bellies. And best of all, the centre also admits the parents of the children, to teach them about proper nutrition. One of the ladies who works for the foundation, Sajini, told me stories about how many of the children come to be there not through neglect, but through ignorance. Much of the food donations they receive, she told me, were things like biscuits and two minute noodles which were cheap, but low in nutrients. And many families were feeding this cheap food to their children and selling their home grown rice and vegetables. There was one lady who was brought in with her child who had diarrhoea, because she thought she shouldn’t feed him anything while he was sick.

It was stories like these that made me fully appreciate what these charities and foundations do. There are some, it is true, that are there mainly to bring in tourist dollars, but some, like the Nepal Youth Foundation, truly are doing life changing work – because they are providing education, and treating the cause, not just the symptoms. Of course, in the aftermath of an event like the 2015 earthquakes, there are many children and families who will fall through the gaps and some that will simply miss out due to lack of resources. But it’s good to know that there are people like Sajini and Som working for a better future for Nepal. It gives me hope.